Heather Christian & the Arbornauts is the music-brainchild of Heather Christian, the daughter of a blues musician and a go-go dancer from backwoods Mississippi, and 5 of the most virtuosic boy prodigies she could find. Their pulls from the traditional gospel canon in tandem with circus music, folk story spinning and noise rock to romp, stomp and screech her dream-hymnal story-songs of heart-ache, time travel, space travel, bubbling, blustering, and good old fashioned feeling good.

Heather Christian is a disgruntled classical pianist who has worked in gospel churches, uptown Catholic cathedrals and downtown theaters in NYC for most of her life. Her songs are influenced in equal parts by of these things. The songs are surrealistic love letters inspired mostly by dreams, spun through 5 part choral harmonies that she and the Arbornauts sing with as much spiritual abandon as a proper choir of varying color. Primarily known for her eccentric voice, Miss Christian is part blues musician, part pixie, part old lady and is said to “howl like a werewolf with a voice made of molasses” (Variety Magazine).

The Abornauts, the 5 pocket geniuses Miss Christian keeps in her constant company include Jon Anderson (organ), Matt Bogdanow (drums), Sasha Brown (guitar), Chris Giarmo (accordian, vox) and Josh Myers (bass). They come together from musical backgrounds of varying texture and style to give Miss Christian’s songs an American quilt of stylistic tools that they craft into singular and cohesive dream-hymn song-scapes that are each different and alive.

“Christian is something else…We hear her squinting out words and then making them into daggers, as if she’s handing you little pieces of electric fencing, with you having no prior knowledge of what you may be taking into your clutches. It zings you and flips you and bugs your eyes out- your eyebrowns and knuckle hair singe and it’s all because you could look over at Christian and she’d have smoke coming from her ears, her throat lit up redder than a white-hot chunk of coal.” – Daytrotter.com

“Christian’s voice is like a crazed rubber band — its capacity to bend, stretch, and snap is consistently surprising. Her five-piece band is reassuringly confident, performing Christian’s strange and special new-music compositions with the stage chops of a seasoned rock band.” – flavorpill.com

Car On The Moon was formed around a lullaby and a backbeat. With rhythm in the forefront, Elias Orling approaches songwriting with the minimalist approach of a bassist, allowing the lyrics and melody to dance together seamlessly. Drummer, Danny Festa grounds the songs in traditional blues and rock n' roll rhythms while creating space that pushes the songs along. With music about love, death, hunger and hope, water, sex, cars and trust, Car On The Moon sounds like the things you hold most dear.

THE MUSIC SLUT

"With a sound that brings to mind Bon Iver, early Whiskeytown and even (at times) B.B. King, Car On Moon won me over with their brief yet engaging set. While Car On The Moon’s original music was surely intriguing, it was the duo’s cover of Buddy Holly’s ‘Not Fade Away’ which clearly garnered the loudest cheers of the evening."

JEZEBEL MUSIC

If you followed 2008’s Williamsburg Live Songwriter Competition, you probably remember the song “Sea of Indians,” which granted one songster passage to the Semi-Finals. But considering that songs are not in the habit of writing or performing themselves, we know that the responsible party isn’t so much “Sea of Indians” itself as its author, Elias Orling. At the WLSC2008, Elias performed with an oversized ukulele (a “buke” perhaps?), but not in the style most frequently associated with the instrument. Minimally plucked/strummed, the uke was a simple background for Elias’s unadorned, provocative voice to sing a repeating melody over lyrics seemingly searching for a better understanding of his past, including memorable lines such as, “Who were my great grandparents? / Did they walk a thousand miles?” .. ....